Greek companies take EU lead in innovation

Greece emerges as a pioneer in terms of the percentage of businesses that innovate, and indeed with quite a difference from the European average.

Specifically, according to the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) published by Eurostat, Greece shows the highest percentage of innovative businesses in the EU in the period 2018-2020, at 73%, compared to 53% of the European average.

The survey examines two categories of innovation: products and business practices.

In second place is Belgium with a percentage of innovative businesses of 71%, followed by Germany and Finland (both 69%) and Cyprus (66%).

Conversely, the lowest performance is shown by Romania, where only 11% of all businesses innovate, Latvia (32%), Hungary, Spain (33%) and Poland (35%).

Medium and large companies are more innovative

Large firms with 250 or more employees were more likely to have introduced innovations (74%) than medium-sized firms with 50-249 employees (60%).

Almost seven in ten large companies introduced a business practice innovation (69%) and more than half introduced a product innovation (55%).

In the vast majority of companies classified as small (10-49 employees), only nearly four in ten show some innovation in business practices and about a quarter in products.